German feminist Alice Schwarzer to close Emma magazine after 50 years

Germany's best-known feminist, Alice Schwarzer, is closing her magazine Emma after 50 years, with the December 8 issue its last, she told dpa on Wednesday.

Financial reasons were not the main factor behind the decision, the 83-year-old said, noting that although circulation was falling, revenue still covered costs.

"No, we are leaving because we think: Enough is enough!" Schwarzer said.

For three generations, Emma had held its ground and taken a stand against "quite a bit of nonsense in the name of feminism," she said. "So allow us to admit it: We are now exhausted."

Schwarzer founded the feminist magazine Emma, which published its first issue on January 26, 1977, as a counterweight to Germany's male-dominated media.

Looking back, she said hostility towards women in "men's media" had convinced her that female journalists needed their own magazine and their own voice.

Controversial views 

Since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Schwarzer has called for swift peace negotiations with Moscow.

Critics have accused her of losing sight of which country was the aggressor and which was the victim.

In 2024, Schwarzer acknowledged that her position on the war had cost Emma subscribers. Although many readers supported the magazine's stance, one in five had cancelled their subscriptions in protest, she said.

Schwarzer has also faced criticism over her views on transgender issues.

In 2023, a group of 33 writers and artists called for an appearance by Schwarzer at a literary festival in Leipzig to be cancelled, accusing her of repeatedly making transphobic, racist and misogynistic statements.

Schwarzer rejected the accusations, insisting that she had never attacked transgender people and arguing that it should be possible to question certain policies on gender identity without being excluded from public debate.

Questions over successor

Questions were occasionally raised about whether Schwarzer should hand over the leadership of Emma, which is published every two months, to a younger generation. In 2008, journalist Lisa Ortgies did take over as editor-in-chief, but the two soon fell out and Schwarzer took charge of the magazine again.

In the penultimate issue, due to appear on October 27, Schwarzer said she had sought female journalists who shared the magazine's outlook, including potential successors as editor-in-chief.

Some suitable candidates had emerged, she said, but they preferred to work for other media outlets, where they faced less hostility.

Initially based in central Cologne, the magazine's editorial offices later moved to the medieval Bayenturm tower in the city's Rheinauhafen district.

There, Schwarzer worked beneath a portrait of French philosopher and women's rights advocate Simone de Beauvoir, who had inspired her in the 1960s.

Looking back, Schwarzer said many people today were unaware of the hardships women had endured and the rights they had fought to secure.

But she also recalled the freedom and optimism of the women's movement in its early years.

"Those were years of new beginnings, of exuberance! We didn't just fight, we also celebrated and danced," she said.

"We had few constraints. We didn't have Instagram and we didn't inject Botox. That's often hard to convey."

At the magazine's 40th anniversary in 2017, Schwarzer had still been optimistic about its future, telling dpa that feminist issues were attracting renewed interest.

Magazine's legacy to be preserved

Schwarzer said Emma had helped change Germany over the past half-century, highlighting its early reporting on child sexual abuse and Islamism.

The magazine had begun covering those issues in 1978 and 1979 respectively, long before many other publications, she said.

She also credited Emma with drawing wider media attention to issues including Germany's tax arrangements for married couples, breast cancer and female genital mutilation.

Schwarzer described Emma as the world's last professional feminist-owned magazine still sold on newsstands.

The magazine's extensive archive, including correspondence, campaign materials and other documents, will be transferred in its entirety to the German Literature Archive in the south-western town of Marbach, where it will be made accessible to researchers and other interested members of the public.

In that sense, Schwarzer said, Emma would ultimately "live on for eternity."